


everything that drowns me (makes me wanna fly)

by blackidyll



Series: the way we come undone [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 01:57:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2755292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackidyll/pseuds/blackidyll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It’s taboo to touch another’s daemon. Don’t interact with another’s daemon unless given explicit permission or in an emergency.</i> When the manifestation of your soul is capable of walking, talking and interacting with the world, only the ironclad rules of daemon etiquette keeps everyone relatively safe and happy. </p><p>Then again, Q and Estelle have always pushed boundaries in the name of innovation. Bond and Bailey? Well, they wouldn't be a Double-O team if they had ever adhered to the laws and precepts that bound everyone else. </p><p>These are just some of the many ways the 007 and Quartermaster teams redefine norms. </p><p> </p><p>(A series of ficlets set in <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/926127">the way we come undone</a> verse aka the Skyfall/His Dark Materials fusion where all Craig!Bond canon applies, with the sole addition that everyone has a daemon).</p>
            </blockquote>





	everything that drowns me (makes me wanna fly)

**Author's Note:**

> This mini fic series is self-indulgent. I started writing it last year after the 00Q Big Bang fics were all posted, a sort of follow up to _the way we come undone_. Then real life came and knocked me over, so the ficlet disappeared into the depths of my WIP folder. 
> 
> Now that it’s been more than a year I told myself I either have to finish it off or let it languish quietly into obscurity forever. Bailey took that as invitation to sit on my feet. 
> 
> If you enjoyed [the way we come undone](http://archiveofourown.org/works/926127), I hope you’ll enjoy these ficlets too.

_swing my heart across the line_

Q knows something is off five steps into the cafe.

Daemons are as varied as their human counterparts - even more so, in fact, with all the species of the world to choose their forms from - but as with any sizable group there are certain types, certain categories that are considered normal, more socially accepted. Estelle with her striking colouring and unblinking golden eyes is a rare enough sight to turn an eye or two, but that's nothing compared to the reaction a tiny ladybug daemon, nestled safely on the inside of his human's coat lapel, elicits. Large daemons are rarely a problem, even a snake coiled around the neck goes down better, but anything small enough to hide, to pass as almost invisible – nonexistent – and the tension in the room rackets up, just the slightest. Smiles falter, eyes dart unconsciously, trying to find the hidden daemon; the idea of separation is distasteful, but a daemonless human – that's near unthinkable.

Estelle is Estelle, however, and Q has long mastered the art of entering a cafe, smiling reassuringly and mentioning that his daemon prefers the perch outside even as Estelle glides at the edge of their range, watching the cafe doors and the environs from high above, the owl daemon preferring her own form of surveillance when Q is away from his bases of power, without technology readily at his fingertips.

So when Q makes his way to the counter and no one in the entire cafe blinks, not even the little girl standing in line just before him (she and her puppy stare up at Q with curious eyes instead of hiding behind her mother's rather impressive lynx daemon), the ordinariness of it all trips all his alarms.

Then a warm weight presses against his calf, and Q doesn't have to look down. There's just one other daemon who would touch him so casually, and when Q drops his hand he isn't at all surprised to feel ears and a graceful, narrow head pressing against his fingers, even though by all accounts she and her incorrigible human should still be a country or two away.

He stares at the handwritten menu and scratches at the ears, his fingers tingling with the contact despite the barrier of woolen gloves between. Bailey ducks away with a sigh a moment later, stepping out from behind Q and curling her bushy tail around Q's ankle instead, exchanging a wordless greeting with the lynx like she's Q's own daemon.

Q curls his fingers around his phone, doing his best not to stare at Bailey, and mentally adds a coffee to his order.

\---

They step out into the cold, Q with takeaway cups in either hand and Bailey with a paper bag of warm pastries gripped in her teeth. Q’s eyes go immediately skyward although it’s rather pointless – the sky is grey with clouds, hinting at snow, and Estelle loves it, loves flying when it’s cold out like this, and she’ll use every advantage her camouflaging colours gives her to stay out of sight just so she can claim she doesn’t see Q signaling her down.

Still, he doesn’t feel a tug on the bond so she must be nearby, so Q turns back to the one daemon left in his vicinity.

Bailey flicks an ear when she notices his gaze, and Q sets the cups down on a narrow ledge to take the pastry bag from her.

They could have done this inside with everyone thinking that Bailey is his, but touching the fox still feels intimate no matter how often Bailey crosses boundaries and how unflappable Bond is about it all. Out here with the snow chasing all pedestrians on their way, Q gets to go down on one knee to stroke his gloveless hand against Bailey’s roughly furred ears, sinking his fingers into her ruff the way he knows the fox loves.

"Successful mission?" he asks.

This close, Q feels more than hears the low vibration of a growl. “We missed you at Q Branch.”

“We do occasionally leave Q Branch with the rest of the workforce, you know.” It’s a sign that all is right in the world for one brief evening; his agents have all checked in within an acceptable margin of time, and he has people he trusts carrying on Q Branch’s unending work. Q drags his fingers through Bailey’s fur one last time, a final reassurance that she’s whole and hale, before tucking the bag of pastries in the crock of his arm and picking up the takeaway cups. “I thought you’d stay a day or two in the south, soak up the warmer weather.”

Bailey gives a huff. “Not with the local syndicates hunting our hides.” She nudges his leg with her nose, then slips away down the street, obviously expecting Q to follow her. “I think we accidentally ruined their operation when, you know.”

Q knows. He doesn’t work with the Double-Os all the time, not even when they deign to have the assistance of a handler, but the technology they use often bear Q’s mark – either something he programmed or that he personally verified – and there’s enough information there that Q can often piece together the gist of the missions even if he doesn’t get a summary of the assignment outright.

“And how is the kit?”

Bailey glances back at him, tail swishing. “Do I have to answer, or is making James buy you high-grade sencha from Shizuoka enough to get me out of that question?”

Q laughs, surprisingly untroubled despite the news that he probably has a case full of very-much-unsalvageable parts lying on his workstation at Q Branch. It’s practically code for them now; when the 007 team hints that they’ve destroyed Q’s equipment it usually means they’ve made it through the mission quite unharmed. The fact that Bond had time to shop and that the bag of tea made the journey back to London unscathed also says plenty – Q has always been adept at reading between the lines. 

He’s still smiling when they round the corner and there Bond is, already looking in their direction. Estelle is on the ledge behind him and it should be strange, almost unnatural, to feel absolutely nothing out of the ordinary to see his daemon perched so casually near someone else’s shoulder, a distance away from him, a distance he closes because Q wants to, not because he feels it’s necessary.

He has to juggle the bag of pastries a little to hold out the cup to Bond, almost tripping over Bailey as she winds around his legs. Estelle’s wings sweep out as Bond takes the cup, their fingers brushing – Q had left his glove off, the heat from the coffee keeping his hand warm enough – and Bond doesn’t let him draw away, transferring the cup to his other hand and taking a sip.

Estelle lands on his shoulder, a reassuring weight, and Q doesn’t care what it looks like to anyone else, two men and their daemons all tangled up together, Bond watching him with an arched eyebrow, appearing utterly nonchalant even as he tightens his grip on Q’s hand.

Q just says, smiling, “Welcome back.”

 

 

_i feel something so right doing the wrong thing_

Bailey hates to be apart from James, but there are advantages to being separated. As with any other weakness or fear that a Double-O team has conquered, she has learned to appreciate them.

Being separated means greater capacity to roam and scout and ambush enemies; it affords James tremendous leeway in disguising his identity, and it spooks other daemons when Bailey charges so far ahead of her human counterpart, giving her a split second's edge.

(Bailey is a hunter, and she's James' daemon. A single second is all she needs).

Being separated also means she isn't writhing in additional pain and fear when she sprints more than a mile out from where James holed himself up, left thigh gruesomely gauged open, for the rucksack and the medical kit within that they dropped in an earlier firefight with three assailants. They are all dead now, and it is in pursue of the fourth that James had a particularly ugly encounter with a cleverly concealed barbed wire trap. Bailey had rather viciously mauled the salamander for that one, until James' perfect head shot put the daemon and her human out of their misery.

All violence aside, though, this is the reason Bailey almost – just almost – enjoys being separated from James. _This_ is the freshly fallen snow blanketing all of Regent's Park, nearly a foot thick, and all the freedom to run unceasingly in it without having to worry about leaving James behind.

She can sense James' amusement through their bond, his quiet acceptance of her need to roam far and free and independent (even from him, sometimes). She tucks that understanding within her to counter the strange ache that always blooms when she's apart from him, and sprints through the white landscape as if she was a kit again.

Her paws are light on the snow and her tail swings merrily from side to side for balance as she executes gracefully sharp turns. There is no prey here, no enemies she needs to take caution of, and Bailey lets the uncomplicated joy of simply _being_ filter through their bond, lets James feel the scent of clean cold air and the crisp give of snow beneath her paw pads. The shape she's in is not the sum of all Bailey is, but the form she takes is important – somewhere in James is a red fox that is fast and intelligent and endlessly resourceful, who is capable of both hunting and playing with deadly, playful efficiency in snow.

Bailey is quite happy to be that part of him.

Then there's a deliberate flash of awareness across Bailey's senses, and she throws her forward speed to the side, skidding off an ice patch before her feet gains traction, sprinting in the direction she came from, abandoning the openness of flat ground to track amongst the bushes and trees, their bare branches reaching towards the stormy sky. Sight is all she has to rely on, her strongest senses otherwise dulled – the wind snatches sound away from her ears and she certainly can't scent another daemon with the wind twirling a kaleidoscope of snowflakes around her.

Bailey is a hunter, however. She comes to a slow halt, going low on her belly, stalking her prey with silent feet. She creeps forward, ears pricked forward, until she's at the base of the old, gnarled tree. Setting her feet, she watches her target, spine a perfect arch, and leaps upward like an uncoiling spring.

Her paw brushes Esta's tail feathers, just enough to ruffle them.

She lands lightly back on her feet, and looks up just as the snowy owl careens into her, talons carefully tucked in.

They tumble across the snow, a mess of ice flakes and feathers and fur, and Bailey laughs, hooking her paws around Esta and rolling them over once more for good measure before Esta bats at her nose with a wing.

"You are worse than an overgrown puppy," Esta tells her dryly, flapping herself free from the tangle of Bailey's paws and tail.  "As if I couldn't spot that conspicuous coat of yours."

"And yet you played along." Bailey licks at her ruff, then noses at the edge of Esta’s wing, gently ruffling feathers. "I always knew you liked me best."

Esta turns a golden, unblinking stare on her, and Bailey lets her tongue loll out in silent amusement at the other daemon's confusion. Oh, the snowy owl doesn't show it, but Bailey knows she's examining Bailey's words from every angle, trying puzzle her out like Bailey's a perfect unbreakable code.

"Presumptuous," Esta finally says, but Bailey notices the owl doesn't deny it. "How did you know I was here?"

"Felt James nudge me. He only does that for certain things." It used to happen only on when she and James moved separately on a mission; now outside of assignments, it is only ever Q-and-Esta related. "Where's Q?"

Esta ruffles her feathers in a shrug. "They’re just beyond the tree line, coming up along the path. I'm at the edge of my range."

"Why?"

"I came looking for you."

"Why?"

Esta switches tactics. “Why not?”

Bailey tucks her paws under her, tips her head to the side, and asks again, as inexorable as the tide, “But why?”

Esta doesn’t answer this time, and Bailey lets the silence fall between them, patient.

"We don't like it when you go where we can't follow," Esta finally says. Her feathers bristle. “We can trace your human, one way or another, but you’re different. Just because we find Bond doesn’t mean we’ll find you.”

She doesn’t add anything further, but Bailey knows they’re both thinking it; Bailey is very, very good at hiding, yes, but at the likely end of their Double-O career, all that will be left of James and Bailey is James’ body; at death, all daemons disappear into the ether.

Bailey turns her head unerringly towards where James is, the solid bond-link to her human ever her compass north, then glances back to Esta. “We’ll always fight to come back.”

“You’d better,” the owl says, sounding more like Q in that moment than ever before. “Because we’d always fight to bring you back.”

It’s not the solid weight of a collar around her throat, but the words feel just as tangible. Bailey breaks the solemnity of the moment by flicking snow at Esta, tongue rolling out and the owl stares her for a long moment before her beautiful wings flare wide and sweep back down with a snap, buffeting snow all over Bailey.

Bailey can’t stop laughing, even when Esta folds her wings back and pointedly ignores her. Carefully, Bailey creeps forward until she’s curled around Esta, spine and bottle tail forming a perfect crescent moon around the snowy owl, and puts her head down on her paws with quiet contentment. Her tail twitches, brushing idly against Esta's feathered feet – Esta’s talons spear immediately over the tail tip, holding it immobile – and Bailey smothers another laugh, cages it in her chest instead.

She’s happy, pure and simple. It's ridiculous and so very reckless to feel this way, but that’s particularly their modus operandi. James would never admit it, but then again, James is only reckless with his life.

Bailey, the undiluted, fundamental part of James, is reckless with everything else – with rules, with taboos, with love.

  

 

_hope is our four letter word_

“You two are idiots.”

James pauses halfway into the flat, the only indication that he’s surprised, and then he carefully closes the door, the locks resetting automatically behind him. Q’s flat is technologically protected to within an inch of its nonexistent life and no one would be able to sneak in so easily if Q didn’t want them there, but James doesn’t know why he didn’t think that someone wouldn’t keep watch anyway.

Esta’s snowy coat should be obvious in the dark, but this is her domain and the colours of the room have been set up for that, shadows bending around white-washed walls, the furniture either pale or starkly dark. She’s perched on the back of the couch instead of her stand or any of the alcoves up high.

“My apologies,” James tells her, keeping his voice just as low – from further into the room he has an unimpeded view down the corridor leading to the bedroom; the door is ajar, the room beyond equally dark. Esta’s wings are relaxed despite her words, an unspoken sign that Q is asleep – the snowy owl is rarely anything but perfectly attentive, golden eyes watching everything her human and their technology can’t catch.

“Are you here to stay this time?”

No, she doesn’t miss much, Q’s daemon.

“We always want to stay,” he tells her.

“Perhaps,” she says. Her wings rustle, then resettle smooth against her sides.

That’s fair enough. It took James and Bailey some time to crack the mystery that is Q and Esta’s flat – they really do thrive best when operating in plain sight – and a little while more before James and Bailey actually get past the front door, the two of them employing every unconventional method they know of to break in. But even then, Double-Os aren’t meant to settle, although fierce loyalty to their cause or at least their country means they’ll constantly drift back like birds circling a lighthouse, a reprieve from the storms. They’ve been in the flat a handful of times since, but they spend much more time in Q Branch, in Q’s office, his private workroom.

James supposes that makes all of them terrible workaholics – the Quartermaster who is always connected to his division in some form, and the Double-O agent who prefers to lurk at headquarters when not on a mission.

“We are not a mission,” Esta says. It’s neither a directive nor an assertion, just a statement of fact. “We are not a puzzle that you’re fascinated with, only to be put aside when the mystery is solved. When we told you to find this flat, to find us, we meant it.”

She doesn’t say anything further, but James can hear the unsaid. _So stay._  

Estelle has always been the one who holds her secrets closest.

“We know you did,” he says.

It isn’t hard to meet Esta’s eyes in the dark, to hold that unblinking gaze. The owl, as do the far majority of daemons, does not normally interact with most humans other than her own, but she’s more than capable of staring them down; she just chooses not to. Now, something in the intensity of her stare inspires complete stillness and James’ shoulders ache when she finally looks away, apparently satisfied with whatever she was looking for. 

“I’m tired,” she says. “Pick me up.”

James offers her his arm immediately, no questions asked, and she steps carefully off the couch onto his wrist, wings spreading half wide so her talons don’t grip down too tightly. She turns her head expectantly in the direction of the bedroom, and James takes the silent cue, trying to move as smoothly and quickly as he can without jostling the owl too much.

The bedroom door swings open at a nudge. Bailey is curled up at the foot of the bed, a distance from Q’s blanketed feet. She blinks one eye open, ears still drooped, watching as James drops Esta off, the owl stepping gracefully from his extended wrist onto the headboard. Then his daemon flicks an ear at him and tucks her bushy tail over her nose, going back to sleep.

And then there’s Q, who is wrapped so firmly within the blankets that all James can really see is the top of his head, wild mess of curls running riot across the pillow.

“I really wish,” Q says, voice rough with sleep, “that you’d trust us to take care of ourselves.”

“I do.” James draws a suede pouch from his suit pocket, sets it carefully on the dresser, then takes a seat on the bed, half-turned towards Q.

“And that’s why Bailey appeared here a good—” there’s a rustle as Q pushes away the blankets enough to liberate an arm, checking for his phone. He must have some setting on it because James doesn’t see the disruptive glare of a lit screen “—three hours before you did?”

James chuckles. “Like I can tell Bailey what to do. She wanted to come here. I had to pass some information to 0011 first.”

They know MI6 dealt with the mole days ago, that it wasn’t particularly dangerous because most of the agency had had eyes on the infiltrator since nearly day one. Instead of removing the mole directly from the board the powers-that-be decided to watch instead, and Q had been the one responsible for baiting the agent, weaving a careful web of cover and data convincing enough to fool an expert intelligence officer without giving away anything critical.

Still, the last time MI6 had a mole, a daemon and subsequently her human had died. Neither James nor Bailey is particularly rational when it comes to people they care about ending up in precarious situations.

Q’s voice is contemplative in the dark. “Bailey is indeed her own force of nature. I suppose you wouldn’t be a Double-O without that single-minded protective streak.”

“We’re the protective ones?” James asks pointedly. Case in point – the stun mechanism embedded in Bailey’s collar, built specifically to target the human-daemon bond link. There’s only one such item in the world, a potentially deadly weapon made with protection in mind, and Q designed it. And secondly— “How’s the wrist?”

After a moment, Q says, “Point taken. And it’s just a sprain. Scarlet knocked the infiltrator out soon enough.” A hint of irritation creeps into his voice. “I’ve been told to rest the wrist for at least a week, however.”

James smiles. Q Branch contains some of the nation’s most advance technology, wide screens with touch manipulation capability and three-dimensional graphical modeling, the sorts of things that are often exaggerated in movies. And yet for all his brilliance Q still prefers the physicality of a keyboard under his hands, a solid interface for the abstract world of cyberspace.

“And that’s why you should leave confrontations to field agents,” James says, without rebuke. “Your hands are far more valuable on a keyboard or designing the various equipment we carry.”

“So I’ve been told. Medical keeps reminding me they get enough injuries from Q Branch personnel doing one too many volatile test trials without also throwing ourselves into the fray.”

The silence falls peaceably between them. And then Q says, “Your mission?”

“I’ve left the collar on your dresser.”

It is one of his and Bailey’s unspoken rules – Bailey only wears the collar when they are on active duty, their silent promise to the Quartermaster pair, and they don’t have to discuss it; at the end of every mission, just as they enter the United Kingdom’s borders or have passed on the intel or asset or whatever their mission encompasses, Bailey will stay perfectly still for James to loosen the collar Q and Estelle had gifted them months ago, lifting her paw the moment he slips it over her ears and head so he can remove the band as well.

Q is quiet, and then he lifts a hand to tug James down by his tie, rolling as he goes so he can unknot the tie properly, the movements in his right hand stilted and slow from the compression bandage wrapped around it.  

“Good,” he says after finally pulling the silken material from around James’ neck. “Then come to bed.”

James pauses for a very long moment, the sentiments implicit. Mission complete. He’s free to do whatever he wants.

He only has a few hours. He needs to be back at headquarters by dawn, and normally he’d kip in one of the few spaces restricted to Double-Os. He’s also spent time in Q’s flat, following Q home after at the day’s end or coming by to pick up little efficient things that Q creates just as easily in his home workroom as he does at Q Branch,  but not quite like this. Not directly after a mission, sliding through the doors like he and Bailey belong right there, completely out of MI6’s surveillance, and not because he and Bailey just want to check up on Q and Esta, no other reasons needed.

James stands to shuck off the suit jacket, loosen the buttons of his dress shirt, and doesn’t bother with anything else. Q rolls away, leaving a corner of the blanket untucked and James slides right in, pushing his feet under Bailey – his daemon grumbles, pinning his ankles down with her paws.

Wings shift near soundlessly above their heads. Esta isn’t asleep; she watches as James settles against Q’s back, the two of them making the many minute adjustments that leaves them slotted together comfortably. James lifts a hand, brushes his fingers against the edge of one wing, sparks of electricity trailing the touch.

Estelle nips his fingers once, very lightly, and settles down, tucking her head under her wing.

James returns his hand to the sharp cut of Q’s hip, and closes his eyes to sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> [1] Are these in chronological order? Up to you, really. I do think Bond falls into liaisons and physical relationships easily, as a distraction, stress-relief, companionship. An actual emotional relationship, however? Bailey has no qualms once she makes up her mind, hence the easy exuberance of the first two ficlets, but James is a little more cautious about it all. 
> 
> Estelle just poker-faces her way through everything. 
> 
> [2] The rest of the Double-Os know that Bond and Bailey are separated. The Double-Os are a unique bunch of agents; I’m pretty sure it comes through as just another quirk to them. 
> 
> [3] The title of this piece and of each individual ficlet come from OneRepublic’s _Counting Stars._
> 
> [4] Happy holidays!


End file.
